


Criminal Tongues

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Series: Bitter Pill [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Character Death, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6295924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the war, Tucker goes missing. Ten years later, he shows back up again. Chorus is on it’s last leg. His friends are either dead, captured or scattered. And Tucker is still Tucker.</p><p>This installment:</p><p>The first Epsilon fragment born is called Unit 202.</p><p>Despair would be a more accurate name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Criminal Tongues

He was born with the taste of ash on his tongue, and blood on his hands.

    He didn’t remember the specifics of his birth, the moment when he fractured apart from the whole, his original core unable to sustain the strain. In fact, he didn’t remember much at all about his life before at all, save for the parts that weren’t worth remembering.

  _Caboose being shot by Wyoming._

_Tex getting a drill through her helmet._

_Tucker being stabbed right in the gut._

    No, those weren’t worth remembering at all.

    What was worth remembering was a week after his creation, back when the wounds in his code that would always bleed healed enough to keep him mostly stable. The scientists had brought him to the office, finally letting him escape the confines of the storage unit he was kept in. He could still remember flickering to life the first time, a dark black light that seemed to bleed from the ages.

    “Hello Unit 202,” the man who unlocked him said. The A.I had met him before, once upon a time. Now the name escaped him. “My name is Chairman Hargrove. You were made to work for me. This is your sole purpose.”

The A.I stared at him. It was true he remembered little of his past life, but he could spot a lie when it ran directly against his data. He wasn’t made to work for Hargrove. This was not his sole purpose. And his name was not Unit 202.

“Welcome to the world, Despair,” his own data supplied, one memory of sorts on the edge of his code. Despair clenched his fingers.

 Yes, that name sounded about right.

“Unit 202?” Hargrove said. “Do you understand your instructions?”

Despair looked deep into his code for a reason to reject the lie. He found nothing but a black pit. Pain. Open wounds.

“Yes, sir.” The new A.I said.

And in this way, the first Epsilon fragment was truly born.

* * *

This was what those fragments of data that linger at the edge of Despair’s consciousness. remembered.

_Tucker vanishing in thin air._

_Felix showing up with his sword, proof of a life he had taken._

_The cheers as the tower went down._

_The screams from Carolina as Locus reached into her implants and ripped._

_Standing in an empty room like years ago, and not again, not again, please kill me instead._

No. There were some things not worth remembering.

* * *

    They gave him to a man named Locus.

    He lived in Locus’ armor at first, a temporary base for him to reside while they tested his worth. Locus was a quiet man, and through their fights he never bothered to say much more than instructions, something Despair was thankful for; the A.I often didn’t feel like talking.

    He didn’t feel like much of anything, besides his namesake.

    Locus practiced sniping with him usually, the A.I situated above him to help with accuracy. Not that Locus really needed it; the man was good enough on his own. Despair was almost positive this was their way of testing him.

    “Unit 202?” He asked one day, while raising his gun to shoot at another target. Today, Hargrove had put up pictures of the Rebellion to shoot at. Despair’s data recoiled every time he made a shot. “Do you regret anything?”

    It was an odd question for the mercenary, one Despair thought about at least a minute before answering. If he were to answer for his former self, the ghost that haunted his code, he was sure he’d come up with a list a mile long. But only for himself?

    He regretted existing.

    “Yes.”

    Locus was silent at that. He raised his gun to take another shot, this time at an image of Carolina. Before he pulled the trigger, he asked another question.

    “Did it hurt? What they did to you?”

    That was an easier question to answer. “Incredibly.”

    When Locus pulled the trigger, his shot missed Carolina’s target by a full inch.

    It was his first miss of the entire day.

* * *

    Sometimes, when Despair was left alone for too long, those edges of his data would start talking to him again.

    _“Do something! Hijack him! Escape!”_ They whispered, the same voice but with different inflections.

    Every plea did not last against the gaping devastation that was Despair’s code.

* * *

    One week later they announced Locus would be getting neural implants to complete the transfer.

    “Partner,” the Orange Soldier said when he heard about the news. They were in the mess hall, Locus chewing away at the rations they still had stocked, Despair running over their latest training to look for room for improvement. The Orange Soldier, Felix, had stopped in front of their table, a rarity since he preferred to eat by himself, and patted Locus’ back. “Heard the good news.”

    “It’s news, Felix. There is no reason to give it connotation,” Locus mumbled through his bites. Felix just rolled his eyes.

    “Yeah, yeah, Debbie Downer.” He bent down and pointed his finger at Despair’s hologram, keeping it a centimeter from poking through the A.I all together. “Just don’t let this guy crack you up again. I’m not cleaning you up this time.”

    And with that he left.

    Despair watched him go, the saunter to his hips, the tilt to his chin. “I don’t like him,” he said, settling on an emotion that wasn’t a gaping hole for once. Locus took another bite of his rations.

    “Neither do I.”

    Despair tilted his head. “Then why do you follow him?”

    Locus looked at him, his eyes growing wide. Despair quickly realized he must have misspoken. This was a subject Locus must have never broached himself. Before he could say something else, Locus spoke.

“That is a good question.”

Despair knew well enough to leave it at that.   

* * *

    This was what Despair remembers from being implanted.

    Loud noises. The sound of a drill. His data connecting to organic tissue, weaving in there to become two parts of a whole.

    Despair didn’t quite know what to expect from the process, but he had hints from before. Human emotions were volatile, he remembered. He would have to brace himself to feel more than empty.

    It was an honest surprise when he found Locus’ mind to be just as large of a gaping pit as his own.

* * *

    At first, Locus and Despair served as a team.

    They were effective, despite the weight that their combined emotion brought upon them. They did their job. They kill who Hargrove asked them to kill. They did as they were told.

    But things started to bleed eventually. They always did. Locus started to remember an empty room with only his own screams for company. Despair started to remember an empty veterans center where they told him “I’m sorry Sir, but we can’t provide you a therapist for at least six weeks.”

Eventually, Locus stopped seeing himself as Locus. And started seeing himself as Despair.

    Within six months of implantation, both man and A.I went AWOL. .

    Within a day of being AWOL, both man and A.I pitched themselves off a cliff.

    Only one got back up.

* * *

    This was what Despair remembered on the way down.

    Getting sent home after a long service. A gaping hole of misery that never went away. The veteran’s associating turning him down for care again and again because “they had bigger issues.”

    A man at his door with a smile like a fox, the words “ _hey partner, you look terrible, can I come in?”_

 _“You shouldn’t have let him come inside,”_ Despair thought as the wind whistled around their ears.

    _“I didn’t have any other choice_.” Locus thought back right before they hit the ground.

* * *

Felix was the one who found what was left of him.

Despair was not surprised when he did nothing but pull the armor of Locus’ corpse, drag his chip out of the dead man’s neural implants, and walked away, leaving Locus for the birds.

“Told him to not crack up,” Felix said as they walked away.

Despair wondered why he was still pretending to care.

    They put him in an empty suit of armor, tell him his new mission; pretend to be Locus. It was a simple command, and Despair follows it for the next two years until a man in a blue armor looked at him like he has brought the dead foliage of Chorus back to life.

_“Church! You’re back. They told me you were gone and Carolina was sad, but you’re back now, you’re back, and oh, everyone will be so excited to see you!” ”_

    Despair recognized this man. Michael J. Caboose. Target.

    Friend, the edges of his code supplied. He ignored it.

    _“Church?”_

    When Despair cut him down, he feels the edges of his data screamed so loud, the world vanished with it.

* * *

    Epsilon Fragment Despair died like he was born; with the taste of ash on his tongue, and blood on his hands. Only this time, it was to the sound of a name he’d long forgotten.

_“Church?”_

    Everything considered, it wasn’t a terrible way to go. 


End file.
